“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

I’ve always loved this misattributed quote, cliché as it is. I find it fits in just the right places at just the right times; when I make mistakes at work, when another terrible sequel ruins the memory of a great movie, when 24 hour news stations lie for money, when we decrease regulatory oversight of investment banks, when we bomb another country to attain peace…

It just seems to work. And today is no different.

We are all watching with a bit of horror, a bit of curiosity, a bit of detachment as the Republican candidates slug it out in a Kardashian style contest of drama and posturing in the increasingly unseemly affair we call the Presidential election. We are all hoping for something good out of the Democrats, still smarting from the punishment they inflict on us when they get their hands on the power stick.

We are all wondering how we got into this terrible mess.

And we all SHOULD be looking for a new way forward.

Voting for Republicans and Democrats is what got us into this mess. Both of these two parties are owned, outright, by the wealthiest 0.01% of Americans. That’s 1 in 10,000. That’s a group whose minimum income is $10,000,000 a year. That’s not our people.

In the last twenty five years the Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been the single largest factor of destruction for our once robust middle class. According to the famed economists Pierson and Hacker: our own United States Congress is perhaps the most harmful agent we face as Americans. Republicans and Democrats alike have sold our nation down the river for power, influence and money.

Voting for another Republican or another Democrat means more of the same, and to quote the cliché from the top: More of the same is insane.

In the Bay Area we have fantastic potential. Historically, San Francisco has been among the vanguard of progressive politics – from the summer of love to leading the charge for gay rights, our city is something of a symbol of anti-authoritarian humanism. Today the cutting edge of technology has brought some of the world’s finest minds to our city and we need everybody, from long-time locals to recent arrivals, to take part in our political uprising.

While Silicon Valley is on the cutting edge of new technology, San Francisco can be on the cutting edge of a new kind of politics. Our campaign, Picus for Congress, represents the new way of doing business. We only accept small donations (max $540). We don't accept any PAC money. We refuse the blunt instruments of politics as usual. We insist on integrity, bypassing lobbyists and bribery middlemen to remain responsive to the needs of every citizen. We demand the separation of money and policy. We maintain that Congress doesn’t have to be broken.

And we are going to win.

But we need some help. While we disrupt the most broken, most useless system in this nation – the political system – we look to the professional disrupters to join us. And with so much at stake – massive wealth inequality, climate change, an explosive police state, government spying, endless war, trillions of wasted tax dollars – I argue that nothing is more important than this.

If our election process was a business someone would have Ubered it out of existence by now.